Upgrade your PCs, servers, and phones: Ubuntu 13.10 lands tomorrow

First stable release of Ubuntu for phones is ready.

The newest version of Ubuntu is a big one, but not for the usual reasons. With Ubuntu 13.10 (aka Saucy Salamander) coming out tomorrow, the desktop and server editions will get some upgrades as always. But the biggest change is that Canonical is delivering the first stable version of Ubuntu for phones.

Beta versions of the mobile Ubuntu have been available to test for months, and now version 1.0 will be ready for supported devices, namely the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 phones. Preview versions have also been running on the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, but Canonical isn't quite ready to declare Ubuntu stable for those larger touchscreens.

Ubuntu 14.04, slated for arrival in April 2014, is Canonical's target for delivering an operating system that runs on everything, including phones, tablets, desktops, and servers. Phones preinstalled with Ubuntu should also ship sometime in Q1 or Q2 next year, assuming Canonical can get the right deals in place with carriers and hardware makers.

While Ubuntu for phones runs well on a Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4, the release is "really intended for carriers, OEMs, and enthusiasts and not general use," Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon told Ars.

On tablets, there are still some device-specific features that haven't been enabled. For example, on the Nexus 7, the camera doesn't work and the orientation won't shift to landscape mode, Bacon said.

But in getting Ubuntu for phones ready, Canonical has put the core pieces of its mobile platform together. That includes an app store and tools for developers to build apps and upload them.

Ubuntu for phones also includes Mir, the new display server that Canonical intends to use across its whole stack instead of the X window system. Mir itself is working fine on the desktop, but it won't ship with 13.10 for desktops because XMir—an X11 compatibility layer for Mir—isn't yet able to properly support multimonitor setups.

Canonical is shooting to get Mir into the desktop in 14.04, assuming no unforeseen challenges pop up. "We will only bring Mir into 14.04 if we can be assured that we're not going to have any support issues," Bacon said. "Generally it works pretty good [on 13.10]. Mir itself is pretty rock solid."

Ubuntu 13.10 will be ready for download "at some point on Thursday," Bacon said. Canonical doesn't announce the time in advance because "otherwise the entire planet will hit Ubuntu.com at that time," he said.

Desktops and servers

In terms of immediate impact, the release of the desktop and server platforms affect more people than the phone release. But the desktop won't look dramatically different from 13.04.

"The desktop is seeing a little bit less feature development because most of the engineering has been focused on the phone," Bacon said.

New versions of LibreOffice, RhythmBox, and Firefox are included in 13.10, naturally.

One desktop feature that some will like and some will hate is called Smart Scopes, which greatly expands Internet search results in the Unity Dash. This effort began when Canonical added Amazon to the Dash. Smart Scopes brings results from many more sites such as Wikipedia, reddit, Foursquare, eBay, the Ubuntu One music store, and Grooveshark, Bacon said. Smart Scopes can be disabled if you prefer the Dash to search only your desktop instead of the whole Internet.

We have a full review of the desktop ready to roll tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Ubuntu Server 13.10, also available tomorrow, brings improvements targeted at businesses building private clouds and virtualization deployments. These include the latest version of the OpenStack cloud building software and upgrades to the Juju management software, which helps IT shops deploy applications to various cloud services.

"In 13.10, Juju can instantly deploy an entire software environment or service as a 'bundle' directly from the easy-to-use Juju GUI, improving on the previous deployment of individual components," Canonical said in a press release. "This reduces complexity and enables administrators to share entire complex workloads consisting of many related parts."

Juju can also manage LXC, or Linux Containers, a lightweight virtualization technology that lets users run multiple isolated Linux systems on a single physical or virtual machine.

"The Ubuntu LXC update in 13.10 provides blindingly fast (less than one second) and efficient cloning of containers for faster scaling of containerized services," Canonical said.

Ubuntu Server and Openstack are becoming an increasingly large part of Canonical's revenue. Although Canonical is not about to topple Linux server king Red Hat, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told Ars recently that the company's server and Openstack business is profitable.

That stands in contrast to Canonical's overall business, which still loses money. Shuttleworth hopes his grand vision of a platform that extends from mobile phones to desktops, servers, and the cloud will ultimately push Canonical over the top.

80 Reader Comments

If Ubuntu continues its aggressive and sneaky tactics against users privacy then the current version might be the last Ubuntu version I use.

I not a old Ubuntu user and have not donated yet as I was not aware yet if I like the it enough but considering current state, I am not sure that I would consider it again.

If you want to have your Ubuntu back the way you want it, I would suggest Kubuntu (KDE) or Xubuntu (Xfce). From what I understand, they have diverged from Ubuntu in that they still use the Ubuntu repositories, but will not be using Mir or Smart Scopes.

See, problem is not the appearance of the Unity, to be honest, I very much like it and find that it is one of the best available user interfaces for laptop computers.

Problem is that the default installation is collecting information and sharing it with third-parties. What is even more serious problem is that there is no official guide how to disable this.

What is even more worse than that is that they promised privacy controls for version 13.04 but did not deliver. Instead they went on with even more aggressive tactics.

This thing sticks and by big time.

The online 'service' in the dash board can be disabled quite easily . This can be a privacy issue for some people, but is still anonymous . I guess that if you have issues with this then you have issues with goggle services as well. Even more, you must have privacy concerns while navigating in Arstechnica too.

Seeing the comment about Ubuntu Server made me curious of something. When Ubuntu is installed as a server can it be very light weight? Could I install it on an Atom-based box for instance to manage files, firewalls, etc?

Datapoint: the last time I created an Ubuntu Server VM, it did not by default start any GUI at all. So if you're talking about lightweight in terms of CPU, GPU, and RAM footprint, I suspect so.

If you're talking about lightweight in terms of storage requirements... different people have different standards, and by my standards there are no popular lightweight distributions of Linux left. (I used to run a Debian server that had 12MB of RAM and under 500MB of disk; was sufficient for years.)

Why on earth is Canonical trying to push Mir so hard when Wayland has already been decided upon as the replacement for X and is being supported by literally everyone else in the Linux community? Seems like they're picking up NIH syndrome from MS and Apple.

Supposedly, the problem was that Wayland wasn't where it needed to be to meet their mobile needs at the time of announcement, and there might have been a design difference or two. I think the real problem is that Canonical is unable to swallow their pride and admit they made a mistake.

I run an Ubuntu Server installation in a VM as a dev webserver. If you aren't familiar with Linux terminal commands, the learning curve will be somewhat steep at first, but I recommend downloading Virtual Box and Ubuntu Server. They are both free...so the whole thing will cost you nothing but your time.

Thanks. Back in MY day (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, etc.) the only computers we could use in the labs at school were UNIX boxes from DEC or SGI (if that doesn't date me I don't know what will). I have some comprehension of how a command line works and how to read documentation. However, I certainly won't know the flags, etc. to use. From that point of view I felt installing a Ubuntu might be a better idea than something like pure Debian.

And that's why we have man pages.[/quote]

I think they decided that they would not use wayland for control purposes. Ubuntu has been trying to show they can compeat with IOS and Android (who I belive have thier own display servers?) Anyway I belive they just don't want to be dependant on to many 3rd parties.

Are there any real reasons for desktop users to upgrade then? I really feel like it's not worth the hassle in order to get a couple of non-features.

I would say if you're not running an LTS release, yes. When a new release comes out, it's very reasonable to expect that support for existing non-LTS releases will soon degrade.

13.04 is not an LTS release. I'm planning on upgrading my 13.04 systems and VMs to 13.10, though perhaps not immediately.

I am not planning on upgrading my 12.04 LTS systems and VMs until some time between the next LTS release and the end of support for 12.04. (Some of those systems, like the paleolithic laptop I set up for my father-in-law -- which he's happy with, by the way -- may then get replaced instead of upgraded.)

Canonical is never quite ready to declare any of their "wish-upon-a-star" fairy tales as stable.

"...Beta versions of the mobile Ubuntu have been available to test for months, and now version 1.0 will be ready for supported devices...

Get that folks? Canonical has conveniently had this product ready for MONTHS. MONTHS, mind you, and now they're ready to release VERSION ONE-POINT-NAUGHT on the world, but (ssshhh!! real quiet, now) only for selected, supported devices.

Apparently, the carny--as in 'carnival show'--team of Shutlleworth and Bacon never heard of the veteran users' maxim of NEVER using the "...POINT-ZERO" version of anything.

Expect to get Canonical's "1.0" version, and you won't be disappointed.

"...The desktop is seeing a little bit less feature development because most of the engineering has been focused on the phone," Bacon said...

This is code (everything that Bacon, and Shuttleworth, says is in code) for, "The desktop is seeing a LOT less feature development...".

"One desktop feature"--WHICH HAS BEEN AROUND A LOOOONG TIME, A MAJOR SOURCE OF CONTROVERSY, AND WHICH SHUTTLEWORTH ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO BUDGE ON--"that some will like and some will hate is called Smart Scopes, which greatly expands Internet search results in the Unity Dash..." Also known as "SPYWARE". And DON"T tell me I can disable it, all you Shuttleworth cult members.******************************************************************************************************

"We have a full review of the desktop ready to roll tomorrow, so stay tuned."

Why? you expect to report anything new, except new horseshit from the Shuttleworth/Bacon comedy team?

Canonical is never quite ready to declare any of their "wish-upon-a-star" fairy tales as stable.

"...Beta versions of the mobile Ubuntu have been available to test for months, and now version 1.0 will be ready for supported devices...

Get that folks? Canonical has conveniently had this product ready for MONTHS. MONTHS, mind you, and now they're ready to release VERSION ONE-POINT-NAUGHT on the world, but (ssshhh!! real quiet, now) only for selected, supported devices.

Yeah, unfortunately, unified support for ARM devices that is user-loaded is still in a very primitive state. Hopefully, in a few years, projects like Linaro will have taken hold, and every new device that comes out will work out of the box with a couple of distros, at most requiring some device specific packages.

Quote:

Apparently, the carny--as in 'carnival show'--team of Shutlleworth and Bacon never heard of the veteran users' maxim of NEVER using the "...POINT-ZERO" version of anything.

Expect to get Canonical's "1.0" version, and you won't be disappointed.

Actually, version number are largely meaningless. For example, VLC didn't have a 1.0 until 2009, and while not the best media player, it was better at that point than many other players.

Also, another counterpoint would be Debian. Debian stable is often in too mature a state for many.

Quote:

"We have a full review of the desktop ready to roll tomorrow, so stay tuned."

Why? you expect to report anything new, except new horseshit from the Shuttleworth/Bacon comedy team?

I may tune in, but not for any news. For the laughs.

I take issue with many of Canonical's decisions, and I hate Unity, but you are more or less just posting flamebait.

Can someone tell me what ubunto brings to the table thats so much better than android for an average user?

Right now? Absolutely nothing. In the future? Who knows. Even if it never goes mainstream it's still interesting for enthusiasts.

Also for developers, and for some specialized applications. I'm not aware of a really solid first-class self-hosted development environment for Android. If you want to be able to whip out a portable device and have a full-fledged hacking environment right there (eg. to do sophisticated field data analysis), this could be useful.

I think it could be interesting to get this into the hands of my nephew. He's now around the age I was when I started scribbling my first assembly language code in mud on cave walls...

If you're talking about lightweight in terms of storage requirements... different people have different standards, and by my standards there are no popular lightweight distributions of Linux left. (I used to run a Debian server that had 12MB of RAM and under 500MB of disk; was sufficient for years.)

I'm not sure how strict your definition of "popular" is, but DSL and Puppy are both still tiny with GUI support. With some careful pruning I'm sure a Debian or Slackware install could be similarly carved down to size (or purpose), too.

As for Ubuntu 13.10, my workstation started with Xubuntu 12.04 and has survived two upgrades without much fuss. But it's starting to feel a little bit crufty and unpolished in spots. When I pick up an SSD in a month or two I'll probably jump ship to another distro - the only question is which.

Good timing. Somehow I completely hosed my install last weekend. The file manager locked up while I was trying to copy files from my phone, and I installed an update, and when I rebooted it couldn't get to my OS whatsoever. My other OSes booted fine so I knew it wasn't the HDD.

Thanks for the reminder it's dropping tomorrow, I was going to wipe it out anyway (been upgrading since probably 12.04, figured why not).

If you're talking about lightweight in terms of storage requirements... different people have different standards, and by my standards there are no popular lightweight distributions of Linux left. (I used to run a Debian server that had 12MB of RAM and under 500MB of disk; was sufficient for years.)

I'm not sure how strict your definition of "popular" is, but DSL and Puppy are both still tiny with GUI support. With some careful pruning I'm sure a Debian or Slackware install could be similarly carved down to size (or purpose), too.

On the one hand, I've never heard of DLS or Puppy, so I didn't have those in mind as popular distributions. I have heard of Slackware though. (And Debian is my default server distribution, has been since ... I want to say 0.91. I'd have said "since before 1.0", but then another fuddy-duddy as old as me would start yelling at me in a tangent.)

On the other hand, I think it's my definition of "lightweight" that's the real issue. I still remember the days when I could fit a very useful distribution in well under 250 megabytes, and could have genuinely useful Unix systems that only had 20MB of local storage (by using NFS mounts for "/usr" for example).

Just a few weeks ago, I had enough and wiped Windows 8 off my home PC; I'm quite impressed by 13.04.

A lot of it depends on how heavily modified your install is. The more vanilla your setup is, the less of a chance of problems, and the more of a chance that if you do have problems, they can be fixed. I would recommend having /home on its own directory, and you can actually make a backup list of the packages you have installed.

On the one hand, I've never heard of DLS or Puppy, so I didn't have those in mind as popular distributions. I have heard of Slackware though. (And Debian is my default server distribution, has been since ... I want to say 0.91. I'd have said "since before 1.0", but then another fuddy-duddy as old as me would start yelling at me in a tangent.)

On the other hand, I think it's my definition of "lightweight" that's the real issue. I still remember the days when I could fit a very useful distribution in well under 250 megabytes, and could have genuinely useful Unix systems that only had 20MB of local storage (by using NFS mounts for "/usr" for example).

Puppy is pretty popular with low end hardware, and it's definitely a good tool to be familiar with. DSL is pretty niche, and has been largely replaced by puppy on machines that are less than a decade old. At a certain point, though, such concerns become very niche. Flash drives are typically less than $1/GB at this point, so the number of systems that have a use for you criteria are shrinking very fast.

Can someone tell me what ubunto brings to the table thats so much better than android for an average user?

The potential to use either a fully functioning mobile environment or a fully functioning desktop environment from the same device. It may also run in a more consistent manner considering it isn't using something like dalvik, but I'm hardly an expert, and I'm highly skeptical about Mir as a whole. Personally I think the UI paradigm just looks very interesting to use on the phone, but I haven't given it a personal go yet considering I only have a CDMA Nexus available

Seeing the comment about Ubuntu Server made me curious of something. When Ubuntu is installed as a server can it be very light weight? Could I install it on an Atom-based box for instance to manage files, firewalls, etc?

Services wise, it is very light. Services are not even installed. I have a little DNS server, and it takes 1.6 GB of HD space. Not sure if that is considered light weight, in the old days we considered a 1.44 MB lightweight, or at least anything that could fit on a CD. (Remember when you could install Linux by the pound? You'd say I want to install 600MB and Mandrake would install what it could?)

For lightweight in terms of CPU and RAM, I use crunchbang Linux. (A Debian based distro with a lightweight GUI) it is using 84 MB of RAM basically idling. It hops up to 200MB when surfing the web.

If Ubuntu continues its aggressive and sneaky tactics against users privacy then the current version might be the last Ubuntu version I use.

I not a old Ubuntu user and have not donated yet as I was not aware yet if I like the it enough but considering current state, I am not sure that I would consider it again.

If you want to have your Ubuntu back the way you want it, I would suggest Kubuntu (KDE) or Xubuntu (Xfce). From what I understand, they have diverged from Ubuntu in that they still use the Ubuntu repositories, but will not be using Mir or Smart Scopes.

See, problem is not the appearance of the Unity, to be honest, I very much like it and find that it is one of the best available user interfaces for laptop computers.

Problem is that the default installation is collecting information and sharing it with third-parties. What is even more serious problem is that there is no official guide how to disable this.

What is even more worse than that is that they promised privacy controls for version 13.04 but did not deliver. Instead they went on with even more aggressive tactics.

This thing sticks and by big time.

The online 'service' in the dash board can be disabled quite easily . This can be a privacy issue for some people, but is still anonymous . I guess that if you have issues with this then you have issues with goggle services as well. Even more, you must have privacy concerns while navigating in Arstechnica too.

I think that sending terms that I use to search something ***inside my computer*** is considerably more sensitive than say, searching something on the website.

I wish there was a bigger push to improve the Linux workstation desktop, be it Ubuntu or someone else. I want an OS to work with text files, Markdown, LaTeX, and do my coding work: Ubuntu is currently the best for that.

Ubuntu has been amazing an testing, polishing, and integrating Linux software. Everything GUI related from Ubuntu has been awful. GTK and Gnome are terrible. Ubuntu's app store and web store are terrible. Unity is best because it often stays out of the way. Ubuntu doesn't seem to be remotely close to having the talent pool to compete with Android or iOS.

Try out Linux Mint. It is pretty much Ubuntu with a much much better GUI

I wish there was a bigger push to improve the Linux workstation desktop, be it Ubuntu or someone else. I want an OS to work with text files, Markdown, LaTeX, and do my coding work: Ubuntu is currently the best for that.

Ubuntu has been amazing an testing, polishing, and integrating Linux software. Everything GUI related from Ubuntu has been awful. GTK and Gnome are terrible. Ubuntu's app store and web store are terrible. Unity is best because it often stays out of the way. Ubuntu doesn't seem to be remotely close to having the talent pool to compete with Android or iOS.

Try out Linux Mint. It is pretty much Ubuntu with a much much better GUI

You can also just throw Cinnamon, or GNOME (please don't use 3), or XFCE, or whatever environment you want right on ubuntu. I'm sure someone who mentions testing and integrating linux software knows that already though

Why on earth is Canonical trying to push Mir so hard when Wayland has already been decided upon as the replacement for X and is being supported by literally everyone else in the Linux community? Seems like they're picking up NIH syndrome from MS and Apple.

Mir and Wayland sound like healthy competition. There are tons of technologies with many competing implementations and that is generally a good thing. I am rooting for both technologies, and see no reason to pick sides. It is silly that you claim "Wayland has already been decided upon" as if there was some sacrosanct authority on this.

Why on earth is Canonical trying to push Mir so hard when Wayland has already been decided upon as the replacement for X and is being supported by literally everyone else in the Linux community? Seems like they're picking up NIH syndrome from MS and Apple.

Mir and Wayland sound like healthy competition. There are tons of technologies with many competing implementations and that is generally a good thing. I am rooting for both technologies, and see no reason to pick sides. It is silly that you claim "Wayland has already been decided upon" as if there was some sacrosanct authority on this.

In regards to underlying infrastructure, it is a concern to have too much fragmentation. If there was an active effort to maintain some degree of compatibility between the two, that would be one thing, but the goals of both projects are to displace X11, which is a gargantuan task.

If Ubuntu continues its aggressive and sneaky tactics against users privacy then the current version might be the last Ubuntu version I use.

I not a old Ubuntu user and have not donated yet as I was not aware yet if I like the it enough but considering current state, I am not sure that I would consider it again.

If you want to have your Ubuntu back the way you want it, I would suggest Kubuntu (KDE) or Xubuntu (Xfce). From what I understand, they have diverged from Ubuntu in that they still use the Ubuntu repositories, but will not be using Mir or Smart Scopes.

See, problem is not the appearance of the Unity, to be honest, I very much like it and find that it is one of the best available user interfaces for laptop computers.

Problem is that the default installation is collecting information and sharing it with third-parties. What is even more serious problem is that there is no official guide how to disable this.

What is even more worse than that is that they promised privacy controls for version 13.04 but did not deliver. Instead they went on with even more aggressive tactics.

This thing sticks and by big time.

The online 'service' in the dash board can be disabled quite easily . This can be a privacy issue for some people, but is still anonymous . I guess that if you have issues with this then you have issues with goggle services as well. Even more, you must have privacy concerns while navigating in Arstechnica too.

I think that sending terms that I use to search something ***inside my computer*** is considerably more sensitive than say, searching something on the website.

I haven't looked at Ubuntu Server in a long time either -for good reason. Last time I looked it was a bloated mess. Dependencies pulled lots of unnecessary packages, including things like wireless drivers and utils.

For a nice lightweight headless server it is hard to beat Debian.

Debian is nice and, of course, similar to Ubuntu server except for things like the latter's move to upstart. However, minimal Ubuntu Server installations are minimal. Are you sure you didn't inadvertently select a lot of optional packages?

Puppy is pretty popular with low end hardware, and it's definitely a good tool to be familiar with.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I prefer for my quick throwaway VMs to use 2GB or less of disk space (so that the disk image file doesn't need to be fragmented even when stored on idiotic backing filesystems, among other reasons).

I would be seriously rooting for Ubuntu phone, except Smart Scopes. If I didn't care about the privacy attitude behind the OS, I would have adopted Android a long time ago. The fact that it is optional, now, is not sufficient to give me confidence in where the OS will go in the long run.

Seeing the comment about Ubuntu Server made me curious of something. When Ubuntu is installed as a server can it be very light weight? Could I install it on an Atom-based box for instance to manage files, firewalls, etc?

I haven't messed with it in a long time, but I don't think Ubuntu server deviates all that much from a Debian minimal/server install. Debian would also be a pretty good choice for that if you are knowledgeable enough to do so.

If I were knowledgeable enough to do it myself I think I would not have asked my stupid question...

I run an Ubuntu Server installation in a VM as a dev webserver. If you aren't familiar with Linux terminal commands, the learning curve will be somewhat steep at first, but I recommend downloading Virtual Box and Ubuntu Server. They are both free...so the whole thing will cost you nothing but your time.

A VM is definitely the way to go...let's you get some experience without altering your current configuration. It was perfect when I started looking into Arch Linux and didn't have an extra computer lying about.

I would be seriously rooting for Ubuntu phone, except Smart Scopes. If I didn't care about the privacy attitude behind the OS, I would have adopted Android a long time ago. The fact that it is optional, now, is not sufficient to give me confidence in where the OS will go in the long run.

I use the F-Droid open source app storein lieu of the Google Play store. It, especially in combination with an Android Open Source Project or another third-party Android distribution might meet your needs.

Unfortunately, my Galaxy Nexus is a CDMA version, but I will install Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 7 at some point.

Are there any real reasons for desktop users to upgrade then? I really feel like it's not worth the hassle in order to get a couple of non-features.

Considering that for most scenarios, upgrading consists of taking a backup and running 'do-release-upgrade', what is it that you think is the downside to upgrading?

I did have some troubles along the way, mainly when big changes where released (like grub2 a few years ago). As I don't need to have bleeding edge software, I now just stick to LTS to avoid the (potential) hassle every 6 months

>Thanks for saving me the upgrade hassle I guess? Any other reason to upgrade from previous version - driver improvements, power usage, device support, overall stability?

YES!

It probably varies greatly depending on the platform, but my Intel-integrated-graphics laptop has seen a huge performance boost. I've been using the 13.10 "daily" for over a month now as my main (but non-critical) OS. The interface is much smoother and quite a few minor annoyances (aka bugs) have gone away.

The most important fix for me has been a suspend issue that's been present for a while now. After waking from suspend, 13.04 (and 12.10 and 12.04) would work perfectly for a minute or so after which the UI would become extremely laggy for a minute. 12.04 would then start working perfectly again, but 13.04 would sometimes freeze completely ("just" the UI). The source of the lag has been difficult to pin down (not CPU load), but the culprit seems to be graphics and something related to updating the dash (even without the dash being open). Anyway, the issue is fixed in 13.10.

Non-optimized power usage is also down on my system compared to 13.04 (and earlier), but when using "powertop" the difference appears to be minimal.

Does the picture in the article have a really big font snafu right in the middle of the phone?!?

The emboldened 2? I wondered if that was some sort of unique selling point, making the clock easier to read to wean people like me off Android.

That's one of the available clock widgets on Android (Jellybean).

There are better ways of making an easier to read hierarchy of type than to just put a big fat bold stroke around a font so it looks like a completely different font. But that solution would be the quickest and least thought intensive way. The original poster is right that upon 1st impression it looks like something is wrong with the font.

Back in MY day (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, etc.) the only computers we could use in the labs at school were UNIX boxes from DEC or SGI (if that doesn't date me I don't know what will). I have some comprehension of how a command line works and how to read documentation.

As one of the fortunate few who could use desktops that cost more than a car, the real question is why you ever bothered to learn or use anything else.

It probably varies greatly depending on the platform, but my Intel-integrated-graphics laptop has seen a huge performance boost. I've been using the 13.10 "daily" for over a month now as my main (but non-critical) OS.

Superb; I was hoping that this would be the case on my Ivy Bridge HD 4000 machine, where playback with mplayer can be disappointing compared to older machines with considerably slower CPUs.

My only concern is I run Mint at home and Windows at work. The work computer I can understand not workign with UP, but Mint... how compatible will that be? Will Ubuntu try to limit it to Ubuntu proper?